Company Offers Privately-built Downtown Transit

A Chicago company has offered to build an elevated rapid transit system in Fort Lauderdale with money from private investors and at no cost to the city.

The proposal is one of a dozen corporate expressions of interest in the so- called people mover system city engineers and planners have received so far. None, they say, will be considered until a feasibility study is begun next spring.

Officials also have been meeting privately with representatives of engineering firms that want the $881,000 contract for the feasibility analysis itself, which is to be underwritten by the state, city, county and Downtown Development Authority.

The discussions are preliminary, and prospective applicants will have to submit detailed proposals. The successful firm is scheduled to be selected May 14.

Once the feasibility study is begun, it will be at least a year before any proposals from suppliers, or even a specific route, will be considered.

Interest in the people mover has been reawakened by an increase in activity and auto traffic downtown. Such a system has been twice proposed and twice rejected.

Described as horizontal elevators, people mover trains would make frequent round trips linking downtown destinations to outlying parking areas and, ideally, Interstate 95 and the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Titan PRT of Chicago, a company that was involved in early people mover plans, has said in a letter to the city it would seek investment from the private sector to build a system in Fort Lauderdale at no public cost.

In 1974, the company agreed to seek a federal grant to build its Jetrail Astroglide System in Fort Lauderdale without local cost, and the county drafted a resolution to support the grant request. But no funding became available.

Now Titan wants to build its system independently, using private funds.

Among the other proposals in the city`s people mover files, each the size of a Fort Lauderdale telephone directory, are some that were submitted during 1984. They are:

(BU) Westinghouse would build a two-mile system with three- to five-car trains, each car holding 14 people and traveling at a speed of 15 miles per hour. The estimated cost in 1983 dollars would be $23 million plus $500,000 for each of nine station stops.

Westinghouse built the Metromover system soon to open in Miami. The company also proposed an experimental elevated train in Fort Lauderdale in 1968.

(BU) Bombardier Inc. of Montreal, licensed to build monorail systems based on the designs used at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, markets 12-passenger, three-car trains on concrete guideways, which are in operation at many airports.

(BU) The Otis Elevator Co. built a people mover from downtown Tampa to the Harbour Island development using 100-passenger, cable-pulled cars between two stations.

Among the companies interested in the $881,000 feasibility analysis is Raymond Kaiser Engineers of Oakland, Calif., construction manager on the $1.2 billion Interstate 595 project.

RKE`s Kaiser Transit Group was removed as construction manager of Miami`s Metrorail in 1981, but remained as a consultant.

Another, GAI Consultants Inc. of Pittsburgh, has suggested that the people mover would be cheaper if it is financed privately, should be built slowly section-by-section and should probably not connect to I-95 or the airport.